Minority voters are key to redistricting process

San Angelo seeks balance of populations

SAN ANGELO, Texas - What: San Angelo City Council redistricting hearings

When: Monday at 6:30 p.m. and Dec. 6 at 9 a.m.

Where: McNease Convention Center, 500 Rio Concho Drive

What else: Citizens interested in offering input must fill out a public comment form before speaking.

To view the current map of the six council Single Member Districts, the two redrawn maps being proposed and the accompanying demographic information, visit sanangelotexas.us and click on "City Clerk" under the "City Government" tab on the main page. From there, click on "2011 REDISTRICTING." You can also stop by the city clerk's office on the first floor at 106 S. Chadbourne St where maps have been posted.

Two San Angelo City Council members support a different redistricting proposal because they don't want to lose certain parts of their constituencies.

However, the two illustrative plans the council recently selected for public consideration pose an interesting choice and concern that is more relevant to the redistricting process: How the city's voting age minority population should be distributed.

The percentage of white voters in both districts, Single Member Districts 3 and 4, the city's two majority minority districts, would grow under either proposal. Under both plans the percentage of non-Hispanic black voters would increase in SMD 3 and decline significantly in SMD 4; the percentage of Hispanic voters in SMD 3 would remain the same or drop very slightly in SMD 3, but the percentage in SMD 4 would increase under both plans.

"That was calculated to create a discussion, a discussion of these kinds of policy questions in the community," said David Mendez, an Austin-based attorney who guided the city through its last redistricting effort and crafted the two proposals. "That's what voting rights is about, and so, depending on what kind of feedback we get, the council can maybe make adjustments to the plans to make them fit with what the community is looking for."

Every 10 years after census results are tallied, district boundaries at all levels of government are redrawn to mirror changes in census data as populations and subsets of the population move around. Redrawn districts must be relatively equal in population, as required by the "one person, one vote" requirement in the U.S. Constitution, and cannot purposefully or effectually deny or diminish the right to vote based on race or color. This means the percentage of a voting age minority people in any given district cannot be significantly reduced from its previous or "benchmark" percentage to prevent what is known as "retrogression."

The city must be cognizant of this as it figures out how to reconfigure its six SMDs, specific geographic areas that are represented — and elected by — the city residents who live there.

The city switched from at-large to single-member district representation after voters approved a charter amendment in the late 1970s.

The district system more closely reflects the composition of neighborhoods and gives minorities, which often are concentrated in particular areas, better chances of being properly represented.

At its Nov. 15 meeting, the council selected two of four map proposals Mendez had crafted. It will take public comment on the map proposals at two upcoming meetings.

Growth in the Hispanic population accounted for 100 percent of San Angelo's modest overall growth in the past decade.

The city's voting age population went from 65,589 in 2000 to 71,398 in 2010, an increase of 8.86 percent.

Mendez said the first proposal — shown in Illustrative Map 1 — appears to be less retrogressive across the board and therefore maybe more appealing to the Justice Department, even though the Hispanic voting age population percentage in SMD 3 decreases more under the second proposal (Illustrative Map 2).

Under that proposal, SMD 3 still maintains a strong Hispanic majority, but the black population drops by more than 1.5 percentage points.

"That's because we used some of that population to try to bring up District 4's Hispanic population," Mendez said, noting that "the real problem is District 4" because it is "marginally Hispanic."

Mendez said the first proposal also splits up some of the district boundary county election precincts into more than one SMD, whereas the second plan does not. Dividing precincts, he said, can create voter confusion.

However, the primary concern is avoiding retrogression, as that is what the U.S. Department of Justice will look at when the final proposal is sent to them for review.

Texas must send redrawn maps to the Justice Department to receive preclearance before any changes can be enacted.

The requirement is part of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Redistricting processes at higher levels of government often result in heated legal battles in the courts, if the Justice Department claims — as it did this year with Texas' proposed congressional maps — that the state hasn't met the retrogression standard.

"That's what the Department of Justice is looking at, which one causes less retrogression," said City Clerk Alicia Ramirez.

But, Ramirez said, the growth in the Hispanic population in the past decade was spread out fairly evenly across the city.

And, she said, the Justice Department allows the change in minority voting age population to deviate 5 percent above or below the current percentage.

The deviations in the two proposals are well within those limits.

"As far as weakening one minority race over another, we have not done that at all. We have maintained what they consider the acceptable deviation," Ramirez said.